BLE PARK.
THE BEST WOMAN THAT EVER LIVED.

Those who had come to pay the last honor to the little engineer filed
back down the hill, and the Croix d'Or was left alone, silent and
idle. The smoke of the banked fires still wove little heat spirals
above the stacks as if waiting for the man of the engines. The men
were shamefacedly standing around the works and arguing, and one or
two had rolled their blankets and dumped them on the bench beside the
mess-house.

Two or three of them halted Dick and his partner as they started up
the little path to the office building where they made their home.

"Well?" Bill asked, facing them with his penetrating eyes.

"We don't want you boys to think we had any hand in any of this," the
old drill runner said, taking the lead. "They jobbed us. There were
but three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, and
before that there wasn't a man that hadn't taken the floor and fought
for your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bells
kept bringing up arguments--long-winded ones--as if holding it off."

He appeared to choke up a little, and gave a swift glance over his
shoulder at the yellow landmark above.

"If any of us had been there, they'd never have gotten him. We all
liked Bells. But they tell me that meeting was packed by that"--and he
suddenly flamed wrathful and used a foul epithet--"from Denver, and
the three thugs he brought with him. Mr. Townsend, there ain't a man
on the Cross that don't belong to the union. You know what that means.
You know how hard it is for us to scab ourselves. But there ain't a
man on the Cross that hasn't decided to stick by the mine if you want
us. We're making a protest to the head officers, and if that don't
go--well, we stick!"

Dick impulsively put out his hand. He could not speak. He was
choking.

"Want you, boys? Want you?" Bill rumbled. "We want all of you. Every
man jack on the works. You know how she's goin' as well as we do; but
I'm here to tell you that if the Cross makes good, there'll be one set
of men that'll always have the inside edge."

The men with the blankets grinned, and furtively flung them through an
open bunk-house window. They all turned away, tongue-tied in emotion,
as are nearly all men of the high hills, and tried to appear
unconcerned; while Dick, still choking, led the way up the trail. The
unwritten law of the mines had decreed there should be no work that
day